dayjobbery

Cool News from the Day Job

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So yesterday we made a small announcement at my dayjob. It went a little something like this:

Source: GenreCon News Blog

Genre Con

The Australian Writer’s Marketplace is pleased to announce the launch of the first annual GenreCon, a convention for professional and aspiring writers of romance, mystery, science fiction, crime, fantasy, horror, thrillers, and more. One part party, one part professional development: GenreCon is the place to be if you’re an aspiring or established writer with a penchant for the types of fiction that get relegated to their own corner of the bookstore. Featuring international guests Joe Abercrombie (Author, The First Law Trilogy, Best Served Cold, The Heroes), Sarah Wendell (co-founder, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books), and Ginger Clark (Literary Agent, Curtis Brown), with more guests being announced in the coming weeks. GenreCon is the place to be if you want to:

  • Educate yourself about the publishing industry
  • Learn what it takes to become a successful genre author
  • Network with other writers who are passionate about genre fiction
  • Meet editors, agents, publishers, and other genre publishing professionals
  • Celebrate the rich contribution genre fiction has made to Australia’s literary landscape

The 2012 GenreCon will be held November 2-4, 2012 at the Rydges Hotel, Parramatta, NSW. Registrations are open now, with the special Early Bird ticket price of $190 available to the first 50 registrations. To register, visit us online at genrecon.com.au

Special Guests

We’re pleased to introduce you to this years international guests: Joe Abercrombie, Sarah Wendell, and Ginger Clark.

Joe Abercrombie

Joe Abercrombie was born in Lancaster, studied psychology at the University of Manchester, and spent ten years working as a film editor before his first book, The Blade Itself, was published in 2006. The First Law trilogy, a modern take on epic fantasy, is now available in more than twenty languages.  His latest book, The Heroes, made no. 3 on the Times Hardcover Bestseller list.  He lives in Bath with his wife and children and writes full time. Find him online at www.joeabercrombie.com.

Sarah Wendell

By day Sarah Wendell is mild mannered and heavily caffeinated.  By evening she dons her cranky costume, consumes yet more caffeine, and becomes Smart Bitch Sarah of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. The site specializes in reviewing romance novels, examining the history and future of the genre, and bemoaning the enormous prevalence of bodacious pectorals adorning male cover models. Sarah is the co-founder of Smart Bitches, and the author of the book Everything I Know About Love, I Learned from Romance Novels and the  co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: the Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, published in April 2009 by Touchstone Fireside.

Ginger Clark

Ginger Clark has been a literary agent with Curtis Brown LTD (New York) since 2005.  She represents science fiction, fantasy, horror, and young adult and middle grade fiction.  In addition to representing her own clients, she also represents British Commonwealth rights for the agency’s children’s list.  She attends the Bologna and Frankfurt Book Fairs every year.  She sits on the Rights Committee of the Book Industry Study Group, and is a member of the Contracts Committee of the AAR.  She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and lives in Brooklyn with her husband.

I’d apologise for the big wall ‘o text, but that would be disengenious since I’m really pleased to have news of the con out in the public and registrations coming in. It means the convention has ceased being theoretical and now become a reality, that the focus shifts from I wonder if this could work to holy shit, people are actually coming, it’s time to work twice as hard to make it awesome and worthwhile.

The frustrating part about announcing this yesterday is that today is my regularly scheduled day off.

In truth, I should have known better. There is no such thing as a day off the day after you announce a convention and open up registration, and I’m pretty sure that I’m going to spend my day habitually checking my work email to see how registrations are going and whether there’s any queries to answer. I’m going to be putting together a rough plan for rolling out the next round of guests, since we’ve got a slew of Aussies coming along who are pretty fricken’ awesome in their own right. I’m going to be pondering how we can use the fact that the first three people to register for the Con are three of the most talented spec fic writers in Australia, especially since they’ve expressed their interest in being part of the program.

I’m going to wonder at the pace with which people are hitting the site, and the pace at which the early bird registrations are going (which is way, way faster than I expected).

And I’m going to spend the day thinking about how strange, and how delightful, it is to be involved in running a convention again, especially since this time around it’s almost entirely focused on the things that I really enjoyed working on the last time I had con-based day-job gig. That I keep ending up with dayjobs as unassailable cool as this one still freaks me out a little.

Now I’m going to go and try to write something, since that’s what the day off is meant to be for, although I may check my email just once more before I start…

 

Tenters & Zucchini & Reasons to Shop for Books This Afternoon

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This morning I went to start the blog with the phrase “waiting on tenterhooks,” which is one of those expressions that’s been around for a while without me ever really understanding where it actually came from.

And so there was google, and this rather succinct discussion of the phrase where I discovered the tenterhook was a series of hooks on a wooden frame used in  making woolen cloth, specifically in the bit where the  freshly woven  fabric was stretched out to dry after being cleaned in a fulling mill. The tenter was the frame and the hooks went around the outside, and it had the side-effect of straightening the weave.

We’re not much with the tenters these days, but I found myself looking at the description and though, well, yes, life feels exactly like that at the moment. There have been doings and goings-on in regards to dayjobbery and we have hit the bit where I wait, quietly, filling in the hours with distractions so I don’t over-focus and be disappointed if things that may happen do not, in the end, happen.

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Last night there was writing. Bits of Flotsam 6, bits of the other short story about faeries in paddle-steamers that in that state where I’m rewriting and bridging together disparate ideas, and bits of other things as well.

As distractions go, writing is a good one, although I’m starting to get that itchy-despairing-feeling that comes from being in the middle of lots of things without really getting things finished.

Say Zucchini, and Mean It went live over on the Daily SF site, for those who may be interested in reading the story but aren’t particularly interested in subscribing. There’s been a surprising number of people who’ve emailed or tweeted to let me know they zucchini the story, which is one of those things I hadn’t really expected when I sent the story out, but is really very cool.

The last time this sort of thing happened, it largely involved unicorns. Honestly, I could probably handle being the zucchini guy for a bit.

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Apparently there is a new Michael Cunningham novel out. I foresee a trip to the bookstore this afternoon. Quite possibly by train, so I can finish reading the Laura van den Berg collection on the way, given that I’ve managed to devour all but the final story in the space of two evenings.

What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us remains a phenomenal collection of short fiction. The kind I feel the need to foist upon people with enthusiastic burbling and enthusiastic recommendations. It is precise and lovely and understands how to make a collection a unified thing, rather than a series of short stories packed together between a common cover.

It makes, I think, the whole a much more precious  thing than the sum of its parts.